New North Syracuse mayor strives to maintain services without raising taxes

Michelle Gabel/The Post-StandardMark Atkinson is the North Syracuse Mayor.

North Syracuse Mayor Mark Atkinson wants to make sure that the village continues to offer the high-quality services to which residents have become accustomed.

Atkinson ran unopposed for the mayor’s position in June and took office in July. His term is for four years and pays $17,000 a year. He has served on the village board since 2003 and became deputy mayor in 2010.

Atkinson, 55, has lived in North Syracuse with his wife, Helen, for 35 years. They have two adult daughters, Dana, 28 and Lauren, 25.

As a member of the village board, Atkinson chaired the Employee Safety Committee. He is also a former member of the Municipal Planning Commission and served on the Village Comprehensive Planning Committee and various other communities in the village.

Atkinson is a lifetime member of the North Syracuse Veterans of Foreign Wars and a Vietnam-era veteran with more than 34 years of military service. He served with Operation Desert Shield/Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Atkinson, who is now retired, was a member of the 174th Fighter Wing and served as chief master sergeant in the unit.

Here is what he said recently about his new post:

Why did you run for mayor? I was on some committees in the village of North Syracuse doing volunteer work. Some people said, “You would make a good trustee, why don’t you run for trustee?” And I ran and I won. So I got more and more involved and became the deputy mayor. It became time for someone to run for mayor and I felt I had the experience in village government then and I had some great training, education and experience from the military, and now I had time to do it. So, I looked at all those factors and decided to run from there.

What do you hope to accomplish during your first term? The immediate challenge is to continue providing the high-quality service that the village is used to. We have the Cadillac of services in the village with our parks, our Department of Public Works and our police. We do things that the town and county can’t do, and I want to continue to do that with a zero tax increase. The challenge with that is that we just lost a half of a million dollars from the county sales tax agreement. I believe right now that we are on course for (a zero tax increase.) We’ve made some changes reducing cost.

Additionally, another goal that I have is to focus on the village center. There are some abandoned buildings, like the post office building, and I want to get those turned around. If I can get the center thriving, then I think everything else will fall into place around the village. We’ve been working on a walkable community concept for a while now. We have sidewalks that reach the edges of the village and they all come into the center of the village.

What do you think will be your biggest challenge in the next year? I think my biggest challenge is that people are sick of taxes going up. I’m sick of taxes going up. The state said there’s a 2 percent tax cap, but there’s some language where I think you can exceed that. However, our goal is not to exceed it. I believe in the concept of a tax cap. Quite frankly, I would like to see more leadership out of Albany leading by example.

What have you done to consolidate services in the village? We started in the police department and that was prior to me becoming the mayor. But as the deputy mayor, I was instrumental in working with the police department in reducing four full-time positions to four part-time positions. That was done through attrition. Additionally, there were two part-time positions in the police department that we eliminated at the end of last fiscal year, which was the end of June.

When I came into office, I consolidated three full time clerks into two positions. We eliminated the clerk positions and we created a clerk/treasurer and deputy clerk/treasurer.

Camillus residents are expected to vote in November on whether to dissolve their village. Do you have concerns about North Syracuse facing the same fate? I’m very confident in the future of the village of North Syracuse. We have a very active government. We provide a lot of services. We are a lot larger than Camillus. I think those smaller villages are going to have problems. (North Syracuse has about 7,000 residents; Camillus has about 1,200.) Another reason I’m optimistic about the future is the employees of the village of North Syracuse. They have done just a fantastic job and they’ve been working with management in an effort to cut costs.